At least it flew…

From Warsaw to Moscow, I had to fly Russian national carrier, Aeroflot. It was a bad experience from the beginning. Aeroflot didn’t allow other airlines to print their boarding passes online. They could not be printed in any other city than the city you were actually traveling from either. They just didn’t want anyone to travel to Russia, did they?

Aeroflot is the first entry at the directory of the airlines, but being first doesn’t really mean anything in such entries (looking at you, aardvark!). Its seats were the most uncomfortable seats ever. The plane had very little air-conditioning and the seats were made of leather, which turned the two-year journey into sweaty, burning hell.

I asked the airhostess for a pen to fill out my arrival card; she smiled and just left. The announcements on the plane were in Polish, Russian and English, with the last being mumbled in whisper levels (as if they were afraid that someone more English-savvy will correct their ungrammatical sentences). Believe me, even the phrase ‘good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen’ became extremely creepy when said in a low enough voice. It is as if Hannibal Lector was in the cockpit, piloting.

The food on the airline was not so bad. August 29th is the Russian feast day of Nut Spas. [Cultural note: ‘Spas’ means ‘Savoir’ in Russian, which is as far as you can get from the warm, bubbly thing you indulge yourself in]. And thus, nut cakes above. Note the awkward phrase: ‘the Image “Not-Made-By-Hands”’. The celebration was about some Jesus shape that appeared on a piece of cloth in AD 944. This ‘worship-indeterminate-stain’ trick appears to be as old as Christendom itself.